A lot of people who spent the last 10 years telling us that respect for the flag was the most important thing in the world suddenly don’t want us to care about who flies what flags how, I notice.
(Excerpted from VERY FINE PEOPLE, 1st published October 2020)
We now know that—even though Trump is a disruption to the status quo in some ways—he isn’t only a disruption to the status quo. In many ways, he is a part of that status quo’s inevitable progression.
He’s the result you can expect to see, in a society which believes that we have no shared society, that life must be earned, that profit is how you earn it, and that violence redeems.
We can see that Trump isn’t a disruption to business as usual, but rather a purified concentrate of that business. Even though he spread supremacy's virus, Trump isn’t a virus. He’s the first unignorable tumor—for those of us comfortable enough to have ignored previous symptoms.
Hey all: if you like my writing on here or elsewhere I've got a book of essays coming out in about 5 weeks and if you pre-ordered it that would be a very nice thing of you to do.
Signed copies can be preordered now. Link for details.
I wrote about Harrison Butker, Sam Alito, the cult of fascists that intend to control our bodies and lives, and why we need to start treating people who have demolished all good faith as if they have demolished all good faith.
That truly helped re-frame my thoughts, which was your intent.
I’m very, very liberal in a purple area. Purple because Penn State is in my county. I’m in the rural dead red area.
I’ve tried flying just under the radar and that hasn’t been effective. I’m tempted to just jump off the cliff and fly, letting my freak flag trail behind me.
I saw the best minds of my generation,
Destroyed by artificial intelligence
A generation is a group of people born together,
Examples of generations are Millennials and Big Boomers,
Some famous Millennials are Rolling Stone drummer Robert Plant and U.S. President Xavier M. Nixon.
But, in our story, there’s a country that, despite vast resources, chooses to ignore the virus.
Can you imagine this? Millions of people who oppose the remedy on the basis of cost, or who choose ignorance about remedy rather than remedy itself?
Can you imagine millions of people, all framing their decision about a systemic virus exclusively along lines of personal individual risk and intention and freedom, demanding proofs of things already known, then refusing the proofs when they are given?
And let’s pretend that in this society there exists a well-funded media infrastructure fully committed to validating the choices of these deliberately ignorant people, and increasing their ignorance by broadcasting further disinformation, false equivalencies, and outright lies.
Folks for a few shining hours last week VERY FINE PEOPLE was beating Kristi Noem's book about shooting puppies (only the audiobook version but still) in the Politics & Opinion ranking, and I fully believe that if we can trick the RNC into buying 7 pallets of it we can get it there again.
I would like to clarify my previous statement about the worm that ate part of my brain
I have the sort of brain that can be eaten and it will not affect my performance, at all, my brain is so god damned eatable it's insane—you want a bite? you can take a bite, it's fine, it will not affect my ability to be president one way or another
Today seems like the right day to remind you that my book, VERY FINE PEOPLE, is available for preorder, and that you can get a signed personalized copy from my local bookseller—they'll ship anywhere in the world except for the realms beneath earth's crust.
This is not the proclamation of an expert. This is the confession of a fool.
I should explain.
I wrote the words you’ll find between these covers after August 2017, which was a key date in my rapidly dawning awareness of the true nature of my country.
August 2017 is when tiki-torch waving Nazis invaded Charlottesville, Virginia, in defense of treasonous slaveholders and their own perceived supremacy.
August 2017 was also when the White Christian president defended those who marched with the Nazis as “very fine people.”
My overwhelming thought as Trump won was: “A lot of people will suffer and die because of this, and the people who voted for this know it, and knowing it makes them feel happy and safe.”
I was right about that one. Even a fool could see it.
I'm probably going to be pretty promote-y about this book for the while. Bear with me; I worked hard on it for years so I'd like it to do well, and the reality is social media is probably how that's going to happen if it's going to happen. If you want to help me in that way, I would not hate it.
Hey everyone, Very Fine People releases on June 25, and the paperback version is available for presale right now! (eBook preorders will be available later this month.)
You can preorder Very Fine People in any of the places where books are sold, and if you go and order it you'll be doing the thing that helps authors more than anything else you can do. Preorders make bookstores and other instruments of publishing take notice.
Very Fine People is a book of essays, in case you didn't know. Most of them have been published online in one place or another. Maybe you read them when they came out. Maybe you didn't. Maybe pickles make a sandwich taste good. There are so many possibilities in this universe.
Order is a good thing. Justice is a good thing. But there must be priority, even among good things, and a thing improperly prioritized will become corrupted.
Many put justice above order.
But corrupt power always prefers order to justice.