the duchy of hetkettle trophish

what a fucked up place this is, you know? sometimes i can’t even speak, facing our confusion. yeah, fuck yeah, it’s ours. whose else would it be.

this is from a set of interviews. it’s in west virginia, before the primary election. “obama faces racism in west virginia: many blue collar democrats are not ready for a black president.” but this is wild. i’m beefing up their transcript to include more of the cross-talk. janet is making an effort, from the side.

TRACY, CLINTON SUPPORTER: My opinion is I think the United States of America should be run by somebody from the United States of America.

JANET: But—

REPORTER: But he’s from the US.

JANET: Right.

REPORTER: He’s born here. He’s been raised here.

JANET: Right.

TRACY: But he’s Muslim.

JANET: But—

REPORTER: But why do you think he’s Muslim? He wasn’t raised Muslim.

TRACY: But I don’t agree with that. —I just — I don’t—

JANET: You feel like there’s a lie behind that.

TRACY: Yeah, I don’t agree with that.

JANET: I understand that.—

REPORTER: Do you think that’s a smear tactic in politics, to label him as Muslim?

TRACY: I think it is a smear tactic.

REPORTER: I mean, but—

JANET: Do you—

TRACY: Yeah, I do think it’s a smear tactic, but — I think we have the right to know. I mean, I think we have the right to know everything in their background.

REPORTER: Will you get behind Obama if he does win the nomination?

TRACY: No.

JANET: You would go—

REPORTER: Why not?

TRACY: No. I’ll go Republican.

REPORTER: You would vote for McCain.

TRACY: Yeah.

REPORTER: And why — what’s that decision for you.

TRACY: I just— I just don’t agree. That’s — I’ll just leave it at that. I just don’t agree that he should be president of the United States.

ok, first, this’sn’t my first time hearing people talk about “smear tactic” as though the phrase meant the accusations were true and people were mad at the accuser for being impolitic. (maybe this comes from the generation-long, now, history of using “politically incorrect” as a shield for lying. the self-poisoning well.)

we don’t know anything from the text about whether the two women were friends or relatives or what. the cross-talk to me says they know each other and this discussion maybe has some history, except for janet’s “i understand that” comment — which unfortunately comes during an establishing shot, breaking continuity of the soundtrack, putting the comment in a little limbo, even maybe making it hard to fully attribute to janet — anyway it says, to me, maybe, their relationship is more political, like they’re both campaign workers, or something.

so.

this interview came after two rounds of obama’s pastor making all the news. this much is clear to me: tracy has a seriously apocalyptic view of islam. she’s afraid. this is not straight white-bread supremacism or distrust. and what i’d've asked, had i been there, was to find out how she worked wright into this story about obama. did the dread stop with the non-english name — was it just about the madrassa and the whispers — or did she also think wright was tainted, for his questions about america? or did that whole thing confirm her doubts about the senator? or did she miss it?

you all know i’m big on the “iraq was behind 9/11″ legend and the “mylar moms” who bought all the plastic sheeting they could to protect their homes from imminent biological attack in 2002. maybe not mostly moms but that was the feeling i got. and the years of right wing stories about democrat collusion with enemies. cheney all but accusing kerry of conspiracy to murder his own people.

what does tracy think will happen. what is she thinking.

ps. i know. the history of they don’t want you to know the truth is long. the history of fear of outside influence is long. the history of truth through repetition is long. witch hunts. group preservation.

but i think there’s something— i think reality is broken.

overload? or maybe i’m taking the regular story-jumble more serious because of the future?

pps. on the radio, on the television, brainwashing. endlessly. call libel and lies “protected” “entertainment” and you get the world you get. the strengths of democracy — the power of many — just stops working. fantasy takes over.

but it’s not just that. well i mean it’s never just anything but here, is maybe the crux of the american problem — i think we’re gossip driven. we’re not a special separate species so that’s probably from something like “living in luxury too long” — not caring about reality — because who does — poor people — weak people.

can hear the echoes of the right wing in that. the story of fear, isolation, vulnerability. vertigo and cruelty where care and pleasure work better. the danger of abandoning faith in the ability of the state to be fair — it’s easier to walk away from ideals of fairness with a sense that imbalance is caused by external corruption than to have a simple disagreement about administrative strategy — discord’s so unpleasant — and if you associate government with society, then government failure means society is unprotected — from whatever — notice how many people who hold government in fundamental disregard have their own large institutions with which they would replace public bureaucracy.

including the ultimate — a hierarchy of incontrovertible angels, whose words have no present form — dialogue is impossible — but it’s still only one input in each person’s life — the variation of results is striking, huh?

democracy is a set of theories of government but it’s also an unmistakable fact of human life. many experiences, many stories, many contributions, many ways.

you can’t help but ask yourself, can this whole thing be lifted up and moved. do we require an enemy to make us get up and go. the assholes say so. the assholes use comfort and discomfort, pleasure and pain, nearness and distance, not really carrots and sticks. they treasure you, but they don’t feed you, any more than a musician feeds an instrument.

that’s hard to keep in focus, about instruments. the music is great, everybody loves it; except for the trees that became the guitars. the acoustic beauty of lacquered wood is of no interest to the forest. there’s nothing really better about that point of view, either.

just older.

us, we’re like some beta test that escaped the lab.…

“nature,” echoes the pre-release wetware, “is everything’t’s dumber’n us.”

— the legend of zorro, 2005

i avoided it when it came out because it was panned but as it mixes elements from robert rodriguez, hercules/xena camp, and complex family-community relations — lots of social layers in the interactions — and in-jokes between characters and between narrator/viewer — i don’t think it’s like some hidden masterpiece but i think one who’d slam this would also dislike peking opera blues and be wrong twice — because neither movie was talking to them, in particular.

30% by 2020, needs a push.

well, more than that, i think. more than a push, more than 30%. got to be.

so then what? someone else said americans are keeping their cars longer. that’s even more likely in an extended slump. but cali’s gonna offer incentives for cleaner cars and penalties for dirtier. and people will buy cars they can’t use because the middle price will be the “better” choice, not best. so not good, for long.

every industry handling its business separately. if you have 100 options and all are ≤1%, that’s 100%, right? nobody needs to check that? no, it’s ok. these are big players in the state. if they say they’re up to providing what could be as much as their most modestly-assessed share, that’s plenty.

Last year, the British Advertising Standards Authority, an independent watchdog and regulating agency, told Shell to pull magazine ads in that country that showed flowers coming out of smokestacks, because the images suggested the company was using most of its carbon dioxide emissions to grow flowers, when that was not true.

Bush’s rebate consolation prize isn’t doing much to console me or, I doubt, anyone else of my generation. I’m a gainfully employed 27-year-old, and I use my credit card to buy food because I only have $12 in my bank account. I fear getting sick — not because I don’t have insurance but because I couldn’t afford the co-pays and deductible. It’s hard for me to see how an extra $300 or $600 is really going to be, as Bush promised, “a shot in the arm to keep a fundamentally strong economy healthy.”

“[Iran] has never invaded another country.” This just goes to show the short memory of your average liberal. Iran invaded Greece not once, but twice in the 5th century BC. In fact, Iran (sure, it was called Persia then) was a scourge in the eastern Mediterranean. My god, they even invaded India! Iran has invaded most of its neighbors at some point in the past 2500 years. This is the truth Glenn Greenwald doesn’t want you to know.

On a conventional battlefield, when generals perceive a new threat emerging on, say, their right flank, they will naturally pivot their forces to confront it. Tackling the security threat of climate change will require immediate and drastic reductions of our greenhouse emissions. This will take, among other things, a lot of money. If the security threat is as great as the military now says it is, it will be necessary to pivot substantial resources to address it. The military has so far not followed the logic of its threat analysis to this conclusion.

The political implications of this discussion are clear: to bring down the prices of fuel and food requires bringing home the troops. By lowering the energy costs of production and transportation this will help save our own and many other economies from the plagues of inflation and stagnation. It will bring relief to hundreds of millions worldwide who are burdened by crippling energy bills and the crushing costs of feeding their families.

Not many people would doubt the devastating socio-economic consequences of the U.S. wars of choice, both at home and abroad. The question is: why can’t they be stopped?

lies cannot be stopped, my friend. we barely know the difference.