My blog is mostly movie reviews and whatever random story idea I post a chapter at a time. Though sometimes I also talk about politics, my dreams, or anything else on my mind.
The storm had passed. With its passing homes and businesses, roads and fields, so much had been swept away. A few people remained, their possessions gone, but clinging to hope that they would one day rebuild...
"It is called the free market," said the merchant
flush with goods to the crowd of hungry people."You pay me my price, or you don't get any product."
"We are desperate," said the man at the front of
the crowd."It is a time of crisis
and you want to exploit our desperation."
"I am not a charity," said the Merchant."And I don't see anyone else around here
who has anything to sell.So, pay me
what I want or fuck off."
The desperate man at the front of the crowd hit the merchant
hard across the face.
"What?!" screamed the merchant, his teeth red with
blood."What gives you the right to
hit me?"
A stone thrown from the crowd of hungry people thumped into
the merchants shoulder.
"Ah!" screamed the merchant in pain."You are all animals!"
Another strike from a third person.Then a kick.They were not individuals anymore.They were a mob.
"Stop!" screamed the merchant between cries of
pain."Please!"
The merchant was on the ground now, being stomped on as the
crowd surrounded his goods and started handing them out among themselves.Before long all that was left was an empty
cart with the merchant curled up under it to keep out of the drizzle.
The now desperate man flinched when he heard the sound of
footsteps but felt relief when he looked out and saw a man wearing a Caduceus
carrying a bag of medicine and bandages.
"Please help me," said the desperate man.
"I would love to," said the healer."Tell me, how much is my help worth to
you?"
If you like or hate this please take
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I recently finished another boring
book that had strange pacing problems, it was “Genesis” by Ken Lozito and
narrated by Scott Aeillo.It is book one
in the “First Colony” series.I got it
on sale from Audible as I am a frequent reader of science fiction.
It sucked...
The Plot
After a
botched military black operation against the international criminal
organization known as “The Syndicate” results in the death of millions, Colonel
Conner is kidnapped by his commanding officer and put onto the first ever
interstellar colony ship.Conner will be
made the fall guy for the botched op but will be allowed to live in exile on
some distant alien world.
After arriving
Conner quickly ingratiates himself with the comically inept colonists by
telling them incredibly basic tactics and saving people from their own stupidity.He becomes head of his own search and rescue
team and after a short period of time spent in the role manages to save people
from a horde of slavering monsters.
Then,
rather than offer any sort of denouement, the last 30 minutes of the story is a
massive sequel hook to a book I will never read.
The voice actor did his best, with the material he was given.
First: Some Good Stuff
This book
has a lot of good set up.A main
character with a dark past fighting terrorists and criminals; hundreds of
thousands of colonists in suspended animation means that the author will never
run out of new and interesting characters that need no explanation for why they
haven’t been around; and there are mysteries on the planet, with alien ruins
and monsters that promise adventure in a pulp science fiction sense.
The action
scenes are pretty good.I have a good
understanding of the geography of each fight, the capabilities of the monsters
and equipment, and the limitations of the heroes due to injury and other limiting
factors.It is a shame the action scenes
are boring because they are in service to my first complaint.
Now the Bad Stuff: Lame Characters
The
dialogue is boring, flat, and functional.Little humor or humanizing aspects exist.When variations occur, it is to illustrate a
character as a whiney stupid dipshit.No
one uses interesting turns of phrase, nobody gives any small stories to explain
their own world view, nobody except Conner seems to have any backstory of note.Call me crazy, but the command staff of the
first interstellar colony ship from Earth would have some pretty elite and
interesting people, not just a gaggle of dweebs.
I guess when
I said, “…never run out of new interesting characters…” when talking about the
good stuff, I was giving credit to the concept/set-up, but I can’t point to
anything in the execution.Aside from
the two roles of, “Complain about Conner” and “Agree with Conner” there really
isn’t much going on that characters get up to.I guess, “Resent Conner for being right” is a third option.
There is Sean, the son of the
governor who wants to join search and rescue to reach his full potential and
get away from his parent’s smothering him, and he shares a name with Conner’s
son who he left behind on Earth. Sooooooooo,
Sean had SO MUCH POTENTIAL as a story element, but fails for the same reason
everyone fails.He is just so flat.
But hey, there is a scene in which Conner fights alien monsters in power armor. That is kind of cool.
I mean, nobody dies and there is no tension at all in the scene. So, it is kind of toothless and boring.
Bigger Complaint: Boring Protagonist
Beyond the
background characters being boring the real diamond hard issue at the core of
the story is Conner himself.HE IS
BORING TO SUCH AN EPIC LEVEL.He is not
a character so much as he is a collection of skills.He makes a decision, he does a thing, and
then the situation resolves itself.
There is never a point where Conner
has a character defect (fear, lack of confidence, indecision, or even something
more complex like greed or over confidence).There is no point where he makes a mistake or lapse in judgement which results
in something bad happening.Conner is
always right, Conner always has the tools to resolve the situation (with one
exception where a scientist has to do science at a science thing while Conner
protects them), and Conner is only opposed by the petty jealousy and bullshit
of others, never his own.
Honestly, the Doom Marine has loads of personality, especially by the standards of early video game characters.
I feel bad comparing this guy to Conner.
Conner’s story begins with him
BEING FRAMED FOR THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS and you would figure such a thing would
cause some mistrust with the gaggle of strangers he now has to work with… NOPE!
The strangers immediately accept that he
was framed.
Conner doesn’t even feel all that
bad about all the people dying, at no point does that disaster cause him to
second guess himself, feel guilty about maybe having made a bad call, and at no
point do the circumstances of the disaster reflect on the story.The bad guys did this, he just happened to be
there to catch all the shit.Conner learns
nothing from the experience… Which makes me wonder, as a reader, why the author
bothered with the deaths of millions as a starting point?
Conner could have just been on the
Colony ship to work in law enforcement on the new planet.Same background in the military but wanting
to start a new life on the frontier.You
could even leave his estranged family back on Earth, have him move on because
he could not face them after all the stuff he did in the military.It changes NOTHING about the rest of the
story.
BETTER YET, have the incident mean
something. Conner is fighting the
Syndicate and learns that thousands of Syndicate operatives are implanted on
the colony ship, they want to run their own planet by taking control of the
colony. The idea of an elite team having
to ferret out a group that wants to build their own new criminal empire in the
stars, that sounds epic.You could even
point out that such an idea goes back thru history, the Medici family than ran
Florence (and by extension Italy via their bank empire and control of the
Vatican) their symbol was the visible planets in the sky, and another sphere
representing their family.That is
fucking awesome, and a perfect symbol for what Conner could be fighting
against.
BETTER EVEN STILL, have Conner be
responsible for the deaths of millions.Have that fact kept secret and he is haunted not only by causing those
deaths, but the very real danger that someone might somehow discover who he is,
and that discovery destroy their trust in him… OR BRAND HIM AS A CRIMINAL AND
KILL HIM.There is a scene, Sean finds
out Conner killed a huge number of people out of negligence or stupidity and rejects
him, “My surrogate son has seen thru the veneer of heroism I use to shield the
world from the monster within me.DRAMA!”
There is so much potential, and it
is flushed away.Conner becomes the
boring competent protagonist, what a character like Captain America becomes in the hands of a bad writer.It is not
impossible to make this type of protagonist work, but you have to challenge his
Character not his Abilities.
To continue the comparison, Captain
America is interesting when someone shows him an easier way to accomplish his
goals, but that way compromises Cap’s ethics, and then Cap has to deal with the
harm and loss of life that comes with taking the hard road to hold to his principles.Conner should have had to confront something
that challenged his morals, not something that tested his ability to use power
armor or a laser rifle.
Instead, Conner just wins, and the
people who disagree with him are seen as dipshits.Maybe I would be more tolerant of that if (at
the very least) Conner’s advice was not so basic and simple as to be insulting
to my intelligence.His discussion of
check-in procedures and use of surveillance technology is so simple that the
fact that the colonists weren’t using those tactics makes them come off as
buffoonish.
Minor Complaint: Names
Conner’s
team was called “Ghosts”.The bad guys
are “The Syndicate”.The planet is “New
Earth”.Everything is so generically
named it feels like I am playing “Destiny”.
Bitch if you want, fans of Destiny. The names for things in this blow.
The game also blows.
*Sigh and Groan*
I feel
almost bad writing this out, as the author seems like an okay guy.I feel like the bones of this book work as a
basic adventure story with a lot of sequel hooks thrown in… But good lord would
I love to just go in and re-write this thing with punchier dialogue, more
personal scenes, and more character conflict that feels earned rather than petty
bickering.Things that play to my writing
strengths and my taste in stories.
“Genesis”
is weak.There are just too many other
books with similar subject matter that are loads better.“Old Man’s War” absolutely pummels this story
into the dirt, same with “We are Legion (We are Bob)” or even “Steel World”
which is not high art, but at the very least has some tension and humor.
I guess I
finished “Genesis”, joining it to a growing number of books with the
distinction of, “Bad books I made it thru”.I cannot recommend this, it was like trying to eat an unseasoned and
under cooked potato.
If you like or hate this please take
the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link
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I recently went on vacation. It was nice. Kind of reset my brain from a state of complacency. I want to write more about it, but I am out of practice writing things that have depth because of work eating up all my time. Really, my ability to write things with depth is frequently few and far between.
Rather than try to jabber out thoughts on this topic, I thought instead to just talk about and easy topic, the variety of movies I watched on the plane over and back from Europe. Watching these on a plane is really the only scenario in which I would watch them.
1) Rampage: I like Dwayne Johnson, pretty much everyone does. He is in a lot of god awful movies and this is not an exception. While there is plenty of fun things in this, and I must say, that alligator monster is one of the most intimidating things I have seen in a movie, overall this is a really dumb, over explained, really dumb, and kind of too long movie.
2) (Cock) Blockers: I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this movie. The dialogue is funny, the subversion of the whole teen boner comedy thing is funny, sure there are instances of goofy gross out humor that did not hit with me, but it hit far more than it missed and had much more heart to it than I was prepared for.
3) A Quiet Place: This is another one in which the sum of the parts are greater than the whole. Individual sequences and character moments and motivations work for me, especially a scene in which they fall into a corn silo, and there is some great planting and payoff for everything that makes it all hang together. Unfortunately, I am one of those guys for which the ludicrousness of the premise drags the movie down. I am sorry, it is just too silly a premise for my brain. I liked it in spite of that, I guess, but that kept it from working for me entirely.
4) Game Night: Being that playing games with friends is one of the core sources of fun in my life, and that being an exasperated white guy with a brother who is more likable than me… It is really like this movie was made for me. I wish I had a Rachel McAdams in my life. I liked this movie a lot, even tho the plane was showing the cut for content version with most of the cursing removed.
5) Justice League: I hated it the least of all the DC movies so far and kind of wish it was an even more aggressive reboot of the franchise. In fact, I wish it had been the first movie in the whole universe… Kind of. Since these characters are more recognizable than the Marvel Heroes (or were 12 years ago) they could have started with this movie, had them allude to some event that killed Superman and how it was kind of Batman’s fault, have all the League members off doing their own thing (but have it that everyone knows each other already). Then have the plot be Batman bringing them back together to fight the coming super monster, resurrecting Superman with alien space magic along the way. As is, the movie is a slog of people over explaining everything, a really terrible backstory to the villain and the mother boxes, and it being too fucking long. I could write a whole thing about this… Maybe I will.
Other movie crap that was brought to my attention was that James Gunn, a writer I would consider a personal hero, because of how diverse, colorful, and meaningful his work is, GOT FUCKING FIRED BY DISNEY from working on “Guardians of the Galaxy” a franchise made great in large part because of his creative voice guiding it. This was pretty universally seen as a bad move by Disney. The full details of what went down, in case you don’t know involve a targeted harassment campaign against Gunn by a group of online Nazi-Trolls, who dug thru the writers substantial backlog of shock humor nonsense and pretended to be offended by the off-color jokes to provoke Disney to fire Gunn. The Nazis won in this instance.
Being that Gunn was hired years ago now and all of this material has been in the public eye for longer (for example of how shocking his work can get, he wrote an incest parody of Romeo and Juliet for the schlock film company Troma, called “Tromeo and Juliet”) the fact that Disney acted on this now after Gunn had worked on multiple films that had each earned more than $800 million… This seems pretty fucking stupid and random. People who aren’t stupid and don’t want Nazis to win took to Twitter with the #RehireJamesGunn logo and it is kind of working. The cast and crew on the films are rebelling against the change, Disney has delayed production on the 3rd film in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise (A SUPER PROFITABLE AND POPULAR PART OF THE MEGA MARVEL FILM FRANCHISE).
I do not know how this will shake out, obviously I hope it goes in a certain direction. But for the sake of mental exercise I tried to figure out which unlucky bastard might get stuck with the director chair after all of this is over if Gunn is not rehired.
1) Taika Waititi brought the Thor mythos very much in line with the Guardians look/feel, and we could see Korg and Meek in the Guardians. This seems like a fun swerve and I think that Taika could say something with the Guardians franchise in much the same way he and the rest of the creative staff said something with “Thor Ragnorok”.
2) Joss Whedon could do it, I mean, "Serenity" was about a team of outlaws on a spaceship saving the day, he has worked with Marvel before on multiple occasions and when given the freedom of the goofy and colorful outer space setting that Marvel seems okay with crazy shit happening in I think the burdensome production difficulties of “Age of Ultron” would be forgotten.
3) Jon Favreau is a frequent executive producer on Marvel stuff still and is comfortable with CGI stuff ("The Jungle Book" and “The Lion King”). Much like Whedon he has worked on multiple successful projects and would be given more creative freedom, that can be a big benefit. He might also like the chance to play a space character… Probably the Champion of the Universe because of Jon’s love of Boxing.
4) Rian Johnson could direct, the last space movie he made for Disney made a billion dollars, and assholes haven’t stopped talking about it since then. That will get movie twitter gabbing about things.
5) Patty Jenkins would be an interesting person to steal away from Warner Brothers. She directed Wonder Woman, a movie I disliked but that had good production values, I would love to see her introduce any number of characters to the series. AND fun fact, she was in consideration to direct “Thor the Dark World” and her not getting the role is why Natalie Portman decided to not come back… So, maybe have Jane Foster show up in Guardians having built her own wormhole machine?
6) Andy Serkis has been trying to direct more and could do stuff with mo-cap for some fantastic creatures. He has worked with Marvel in Black Panther as Klaue. Having him put together a cast for the Guardians fighting the High Evolutionary and an army of Animal-Men sort of a space variation of “The Island of Doctor Moreau” sounds cool.
Regardless of what likable and creative person they grab, and what interesting story or creative voices that allows them to explore it will still have this shit hanging over it. It is sad.
That basically wraps up my random movie thoughts. Again, this is just a practice/warm up for writing something more substantive in the future, so, take this disposable morass for what it is, mental junk food.
______________________________
If you like or hate this please take
the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link
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As you might be able to tell from previous blogs, I have an
Audible account.Listening to audio
books is the chief reason I have been able to introduce myself to so many books
while at the same time being able to go on long walks to drop weight.
It is unsafe to read while walking, don’t do that.
Audible is good at what I would call “Toe Dipping”.Running sales on books that are the start of
a series or gateway titles into an author’s work.This allows their listeners to dip their toes
into a much larger pool of literature to check the temperature.No need to commit more than a few bucks, but
potentially finding something great.
I have taken a few opportunities to try out authors I
otherwise wouldn’t.Most recently it was
Nora Roberts.A woman whose ability to
bang out so many books is shocking, and I decided to try her first foray into
fantasy, “Year One”.At least I think it
is her first fantasy story, she has written so many books one of them is bound
to have a witch or wizard in there just by accident, like how someone you know
is almost certainly superstitious about something stupid, but it never comes up
and you don’t notice.
Mild Spoilers, but I am not recommending the book, so take
that under advisement.Also, prophecy
plays apart in the narrative, if you are paying attention the book spoils
itself, which feeds into my central gripe of the book’s lack of tension.
The Plot
After a mysterious bird flu sweeps across the planet killing
billions, Magic returns to earth.Witches, elves, fairies, and other supernatural entities emerge.How a group of survivors cope with not only
an apocalypse but a complete rewriting of how they understand the world serves
as the focus of the narrative.
The Good
There are scenes that are effective.A news station finally broadcasts how bad
things really are to the public because the panic is causing mass hysteria…
that is an effective way to end the first act.Traveling thru a subway tunnel that is full of crazy murderous wizards
and people who have turned into violent rapists because of the breakdown of
society is an effective and atmospheric start to the book’s second act.No one part of the book is all that bad on
its own, it is more about how those parts hang together.
The Bad: Tension
The scenes do not hang together all that well.Generally, there is little tension to the
narrative because not enough information is given to the audience for them to anticipate
something happening.I am reminded of an
interview by Alfred Hitchcock about how you can bore an audience by not giving
them enough information about how much danger exists in a scene.
This book is full of LONG discussions between characters
about things, and those discussions are dull. There is a tone/theme of, “How strange that we
now live off the land after being city dwellers for so long… Isn’t it great?”
which is fine, but it gets repetitive, and it is strange to me that there is
more awe and personal soul searching about living in a rural setting than there
is ABOUT FUCKING MAGIC BEING REAL.
There is also a redundancy to listing traits, I think the
books tells us that the main character is a chef like 19 times and it has zero
relevance to the story.She’s a doctor,
he was a writer, that guy is into tech, but I rarely get a sense of people
beyond their skill sets… and I guess a bunch of them get a love interest, but since
the characters rarely if ever have ulterior motives or apprehensions they all
seem to be in love because they are attracted by how bland each other are.
There are scenes that have tension, violent people are seen,
and then are encountered later when the characters are in a weaker and more panicked
state, planting and payoff. It is the
arc of the story which is not great at planting things. At least to me.
Some information is put out there related to how there is a
group of dangerous people roaming around, with some descriptions of their
attitudes and symbols, but their methodology, where they are or where they are
headed, no mini-skirmish with them ever happens.Some refugees from their violent acts show
up, but there is no first-person scene of the bad guys being bad to the characters.We have a concept of the bad guy army/community,
but no visceral encounters.
There is a somewhat effective villain in the form of the
Dark Angel like characters that menace the main character and her husband.They are ostensibly dealt with near the end
of the second act in a clever way, it is a good magic battle which utilizes the
environment well and there are stakes.When they show up again it is after no information is given about them still
being alive after being “killed” in a fight with the heroes… But, they are so
obviously not killed in that fight that I wasn’t surprised, I was just baffled
that they showed up again when they did because IT MAKES ZERO SENSE for them to
be there in that way.The inclusion of
the Dark Angel characters (I am calling them that, the book just describes them
as having wings) works until they come back, then it falls apart.
You do not really feel the looming threats is what I am
talking about.They are there, we know
of them, (as readers) we fully expect them to show up eventually because this
is a book we are reading, and a confrontation makes sense, but it still feels
like they came out of nowhere when they do show up.Like, “Oh yeah, those guys.”
To go back to something I mentioned earlier about the main
character being a chef, it is not a metaphor for anything, her decision to take
along a set of designer chef knives when fleeing the city is not a set up for
anything (I expected her to use them as weapons or part of some ritual, nope),
and ultimately the chef part is just a character trait that gets referenced a
lot but has no bearing on the plot.When
they keep talking about her being a good cook I just don’t care, especially
considering her actual role in the story that makes her important has NOTHING
TO DO WITH HER SKILLS.
The book also has a weird structure for its acts.
·Act I is about the plague and ends with the news
broadcast about how bad things are.
·Act II is about getting out of the city and
meeting up with various other minor characters ending with the fight with the
dark angels.
·Act III is about the town of “New Hope” a post
apocalypse colony and it ends with the whole thing being destroyed (it is cheap
when it happens and that more than anything kind of killed the story for me).
·There is then an Act IV which feels either like
an overlong epilogue or like the first few chapters of another book.It is about the main character (by virtue of
being the last one standing) finding someone to help her after the destruction
of New Hope, it ends with the birth of the Messiah (hence the novel’s title “Year
One”).
·Then there is the Epilogue in which a wizard
shows up and tells the characters something they already know to set up the
sequel.
I am fine with Acts I and II, but the others do not work for
me.III is especially boring and the
ending does not feel earned.
Even More Bad: Magic *Yawn*
Lastly, I want to talk about the magic.Call me a nerd but I like when people spend
time explaining their goofy as magic systems like it is some kind of Role
Playing Game and you need to know when to drink a mana potion.I have invented my own magic systems for stories,
they are fun.
The magic in this book is vague and boring.I was expecting it to be a lot weirder,
because there is mention of a naked woman riding a unicorn at one point and there
is a Fairy supporting character… But it gets real dull real fast.There is just talk about Dark and Light, and
honestly that was simplistic in “Star Wars” which is a space-fantasy aimed at a
much younger audience.
In a book there is no reason not to spend time discussing
the implications of magic, how it works, how it makes you feel, but they just
keep coming back to light and dark. “I
feel the light within me.” That is dull.
Paradoxically it is treated like a big deal, but never feels
that way, aside from some villainous characters (thin and pathetic characters
clearly portrayed as being wrong) nobody really gives a shit about magic, they
treat their friend’s ability to fly almost like they got a new bread maker, “That
is cool, Fred… I guess.It is a bit
doughy, keep practicing.”I get no sense
of awe, nor any real understanding of the metaphysics at work here.It is just boring and obtuse.
I am not so subtly making fun of my friends who own a bread maker.
In Summation
I thought this was going to be a mix of Stephen King’s “The
Stand” and Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files”, and that is still my go to
comparison, but the characters are not as flawed and interesting as they need
to be, the threats don’t feel as oppressive and immediate as they need to, and
the philosophy behind the magic is vague and dull.
It is not the worst book I have managed to read all the way
thru.Maybe one day I will get around to
writing a blog about Elizabeth Moon’s “Sheepfarmer’s Daughter”.
______________________________
If you like or hate this please take
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As a promotion for the most recent Triple
Crown winner, Audible gave out free copies of “American Pharaoh: The Untold
Story of the Triple Crown Winner’s Legendary Rise”.In my eternal endevour to sample different
things for no other reason than to make myself into a more well-read and well-rounded
person with a myriad of experiences and perspectives... I said, "Eh, I'll give it a shot."
I also thought “American Pharaoh”
might be a break from my usual fantasy, science fiction, and crime books. I had never read a book entirely focused on a
sport before and this was a chance for the author to sell me not only on horse
racing (something I consider deeply stupid) but also on the genre of sports
writing in general.Did it accomplish
that task?
The author, Joe Drape is annoyingly
enamored with a sport and takes as a given that horse racing appeals to the
listener.Which I guess is a fair
assumption to make, why else would someone be reading this thing if they didn't
pick it up with at least some affection for the subject matter?As I got it for free via the promotion I seem
to lack the requisite mind set.
I not only dislike watching horse
racing, I have an actual disdain for gambling, seeing it as a major drag on
society.When “American Pharaoh” started
describing the whole thing as quintessentially American, not just horse racing,
but gambling too I became rather disgusted.Also, quintessentially American? You know, in a book about a horse owned by,
Ahmed Zayat, who is Egyptian…. Eh, that part doesn’t matter, the US is a nation
of immigrants and if some insanely wealthy person wants to race his animal
eugenics experiments for ungodly amounts of money he can do that.
However, let me try to explain to
you what I think “quintessentially American” means in the context of sports.To me, “quintessentially American” means a
being with talent using that talent to find success in an industry where talent
is rewarded, so far this rather fits the bill right?The horse has talent, it won the races.
Yeah, here is the thing, that horse
was bred to be amazing, it was trained its entire life to be amazing, the horse
did not choose to do this, did not make sacrifices to do this, American Pharaoh
is a product.The horse has no agency,
no personality, and does not experience the
thrill of victory not the agony of defeat.
Say what you will about how trite the self actualization thru the "Big Fight" is...
It works as a narrative and no horse is capable of experiencing it.
A final criticism, maybe don't
start so early with the horse breeding part.That is an odd first footing.I
get it, selling horse spunk is kind of the whole point, it is where the money
is.But maybe, I don't know, start more
with the exciting part, the horse racing part.Maybe rewind to the conception later after you have given the audience a
fun opener.Because starting off with Ahmed
Zayat watching a horse he named after his daughter getting violently plowed by
a stud is one of the creepiest collision of images this side of President
Trump talking about Ivanka Trump. The whole enterprise of raising animals for this sort of thing strikes me as creepy and weird.
Whatever.I am certainly not the audience for this fucking
thing, and my review is really for those people who might like the occasional
nonfiction title to break things up but are not invested in the subject matter.Don’t read this if you are not already in the
tank for this sort of thing.
______________________________
If you like or hate this please take
the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link
to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and
otherwise distribute my opinion to the world. I would appreciate it.
I want to talk about a couple of political topics.I will try to make this amusing to offset the
apocalyptic nature of them.Well, the
first one, the second thing I want to talk about is how lame the Democrats are
that they might just lose again while playing on easy mode.
Let’s start with the bleak one
As of right now there are numerous criminal charges being
brought by the Mueller investigation into the illegal dealings of the Trump
Campaign for President and the numerous connections between it and Russian
Oligarchs.While not all of the criminal
dealings they have uncovered trace back to Russia (a lot of it is just good old
fashioned domestic crime) they are conducting one of the most important investigations
in the history of the world.
Yes, the fucking world.The US has nukes and if the President is a criminal then that is a
historical hot potato.
My real point is this, Short of Anubis, the Egyptian God of
Death and Judgement, I can think of no other being I would more readily trust
with this investigation.
And let's be clear, I am not 100% sure Bob isn't secretly
some mythological creature of grim and glowering expressions toward
disappointing and criminal persons.He
has the face of a sphinx.
Can you tell I don't own photoshop? I think that is passable for an MS Paint job.
But there is another narrative taking shape that is scary in
a way that really is the death knell of Law and Order.It is the break down of the public trust that
is not coming back.It starts here.
"It is a deep state conspiracy to keep President Trump
from being President."
Why did they let him win the election then?
"They tried to stop him with millions of fraudulent votes."
Why did they put those fraudulent votes in states that wouldn't affect the
outcome?
All of this is the language of making a boogeyman. The villains are
degenerate, weak, unable to stop the might of the glorious leader;
simultaneously they are well organized, deeply implanted, and cunning enough to
make innocent lawyers plead guilty.
It is part of the victim complex that is necessary for President Trump to rally
his followers.The narrative that
claims, “you have to apologize for being white these days” or that “Christian
values are under attack”.
In a political environment where the Conservative (capitalized for emphasis, not for proper noun status) party
is in total control, able to push out policy after policy if they had the
patience to write it all out coherently, they claim that they are victims of a
grand conspiracy.For the record they
don’t have the patience to write out all their policies because they are dumb.
Rather than admit that they just can’t be bothered to actually
accomplish thing… I mean they can't just admit that they are indifferent,
because even though they don't care to do anything with the power (again, dumb),
having power for its own sake IS WHAT THEY WANT.
In order to justify keeping the power they don't need or want, they have to
construct some bad guy that keeps hamstringing them, "We want to save you,
but those assholes won't let us. I am for the good things, BELIEVE ME.I know the best people, believe me. We
are against the bad things; those bad things are a disaster.Total disaster, those bad things. Not
like the good things that I am definitely for."
And that link leads to this boring and rambling mission
statement that is pathetically weak.
Seriously, "A Better Deal" or "For Our Democracy"
EITHER ONE WOULD HAVE WORKED, but both of them together is bloated and
fails. Just like every policy position paper put forth by Secretary Clinton
in the Presidential election. Too many words, too much nuance.
How do you fuck up a slogan?
Beyond that there is a deeper issue.The boring and rambling article linked up
there is boring not because they are off topic, they have a policy agenda, but
here is the thing, it is basic.There is
a quote that cycles online it goes something like, “The Democrats are better than the Republicans, the problem is, that is all they aspire to be.”The policies spelled out in that mission
statement boil down to, “Voting”, “Ethics”, and “Campaign Finance”.That is about it.
Here is why all of that is boring, “Ahem…. THAT SHOULDN’T
HAVE TO BE SAID!”
If you like or hate this please take
the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link
to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and
otherwise distribute my opinion to the world. I would appreciate it.
If you like or hate this please take
the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link
to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and
otherwise distribute my opinion to the world. I would appreciate it.
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