The Billy Jack Government
Drink Up Dreamers, You're Running Dry
The Cruelty Is the Point
“All the strange things
They come and go as early warnings”
--Peter Gabriel: Here Comes the Flood
In October of 2018, Atlantic writer Adam Serwer wrote a piece entitled: The Cruelty Is the Point (paywall) about Season One of the Trumpocene. He then authored a book of the same name: The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Tr***'s America
“Serwer elegantly dissects white supremacy’s profound influence on our political system, looking at the persistence of the Lost Cause, the past and present of police unions, the mythology of migration, and the many faces of anti-Semitism.”
One of the things that stuck out in the article was the discussion of lynchings In America.
In the Jim Crow era lynchings were not just public they were advertised in the local newspaper. Your hometown newspaper would run an “advertisement” for the murder of another human being, to be performed publicly. People would bring their entire families to the town square to watch a black man/woman be hung and then often set their carcass on fire. Just another fun Saturday afternoon ‘family outing.’
At these public murders, photographers would set up and take pictures of smiling men and women with their children in tow, with the dead and often charred body of a murdered man or woman hanging from a rope in the background and then be given the image as a ‘postcard’ that they could mail to their friends or relatives. These “Lynching Postcards” were banned by the U.S. Postal Service in 1908 as part of the Comstock Act (the same Act that the new ‘administration’ wants to use to abolish medication abortion pills).
The images were deemed “pornographic” and now are known as “Bigot Porn.” (Note: Do NOT search for that term on the interwebs!)
Unsurprisingly, stopping Lynching Postcards from being distributed in the mail was seen as an act of “censorship” by members of a white Congress.
Even though the postal service disallowed the postcards, American newspapers continued to publish images of black men, women and children murdered by racists who stood smiling in photos as if they had achieved a trophy kill of a wild animal.
Spirit of Abstraction: It’s Systemic
Between Season One in 2016 and 2023 the Southern Poverty Law Center counted an increase of 513 hate and antigovernment groups in the United States. That is an increase of 43.72%. These came as early warnings…harbingers.
In Season One, we saw the “kids in cages.” What level of cruelty is coming in Season Two where the jackals were waving signs saying “Mass Deportation Now” at the RNC and now promise to use the US military to round up the brown people? How curious that some of the largest stock gains post-election have been in private prison companies? How cruel will it get?
When we look at MAGA and its appeal to crassness and cruelty, we must ask; “What happened to these people to make them so vile and volatile?” It is known as the “Spirit of Abstraction.”
“Hitler convinced a majority of Germans to conceive of a segment of their population as "Jews," abstracting their identity as human beings into something he convinced the German people was so inferior he was able to wipe out 6 million of them (not to mention half a million gypsies as well).” –Psychology Today
Isn’t it fascinating that Gabriel Marcel coined the phrase using the word Spirit? One can understand the concept of Abstraction as it refers to separation, but Spirit? Spirit is something that binds us together. “No tree has branches so foolish as to fight amongst themselves.” ~ Native American Proverb
We can understand that Marcel has defined a Spiritual Disease that moves a person toward crassness and cruelty and to “otherize” their fellow humans. This is basically the theme of Season Four of The Boys. (Note: If you have not watched The Boys, do some research first. It is over-the-top vulgar and violent and is not for everyone).
“Marcel notes that such objectification ‘does no less than denude its object of the one thing which he has which is of value, and so it degrades him effectively.’”
By amplifying age-old racist fears and using the language of dehumanization, T***p has built a cult following of people willing to view other humans as “degraded.” They are “animals,” “vermin.” It is a tyrannical, autocratic playbook that has been used for over a century and Americans fell for it hook, line and sinker. It is simply Cruelty. Resentment, anger, and blame…all signs of a Spiritual Disease. All signs of systemic racism in America.
Billy Jack Bannon
In the early 70s there were some pop-culture movies that went to TV fairly quickly and featured the director/producer Tom Laughlin as the character Billy Jack. The movies were super campy and basically were a precursor to the superhero genre to come.
Billy Jack was the “good guy” in the movies and the bottom line is, whoever you were, you did not stand a chance when Billy Jack was standing in front of you because he was going to dictate that his right foot was going to the right side of your skull and “there’s not a damn thing you’re going to be able to do about it.”
The single most dangerous man on the planet today is Steven (three shirts) Bannon. Bannon has devoted his life to destroying democracies throughout the world with the biggest prize now in his sights, the USA. Bannon thinks he is Billy Jack. He believes that he can kick anyone’s head in and “there’s not a damn thing you’re going to be able to do about it.” He is a bully and a creep, and even though he looks like Otis Campbell from Mayberry RFD, he is educated and has strategic plans as to how to destroy the country. He is a cruel man, and he wants cruelty.
There is no loyalty test needed for Bannon. If anything, T***p needs to prove he is loyal to Bannon. Even though Bannon has previously said that T***P was basically broke financially. These statements came before T***p gave Bannon the heave ho in Season One. Bannon may be smart, but he has a Spiritual disease. Listen to him, he is a psychopath.
The very real danger that Bannon presents is not just his Leninist philosophy and his piloting of the Leninist Right, it is his “Fuck you, we’re going to burn it all down,” Billy Jack aggressiveness. That same belligerence comprises the whole of the MAGA cult.
The is the MAGA movement, FU. We are going to destroy everything you hold dear. Your precious insurance, your safe medicines, your child’s education, your streets and roads and bridges. Burn it all down.
It is possible the markets will change that tune. We live in a market-based economy. If the jackals really start screwing the pooch and Wall Street reacts badly, you can expect these people to get a scolding from the powers that be. Our shrines are no longer built to religious deities, they are built to banks and investment institutions. If the Gods speak, the Chuds will have to listen.
You're Running Dry
The premise of the Leninist Right is to exhaust the plebeians so that the oligarchs can continue to pick their pockets with impunity. The amount of corruption and grift that we are about to experience will likely make Putin’s kleptocracy look like a grade school attempt at double-dealing.
Putting up the cavalcade of clowns we have seen for actual cabinet positions is a blatant display of how the entire thing is just a consortium of con-artists, sleazebags and grifters. Their goal is to fleece the country and skim all the cash into their pockets.
Elmo Musk exemplifies everything that is crony capitalism. He has sucked off the teat of government money his entire life. Cronyistic kleptocracy must seem like a dream to these lifelong grifters.
Pair Musk up with the guy who sells tennis shoes, trading cards, bibles, watches and now crypto. The coffers of the US Treasury are about to be part of the biggest Three-card monte in history. They intend to plant poisonous Rhizomes from which the country may never recover.
When Americans start to suffer as their services and “entitlements” dry up, will they turn on the autocrats? Would anything cause the cult members to accept that they were used as pawns in an oligarchic play to rob the coffers and fill the unremitting appetites of the country’s top 1% while the rest of us suffer “temporary hardship?”
The flood is coming. And: “When the flood calls…You have no home, you have no walls.”
I always thought cruel and evil people were a minority. Maybe 1-2% of us. To find out it’s more like 50% (at least here in America) is a real brainfuck.