Archive for category The Politics Of Catastrophe
Obama Names Poison Drummer Rikki Rockett Attorney General
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Politics Of Catastrophe on October 24, 2014
After minutes of searching for a new Attorney General to replace Eric Holder, President Barack Obama has settled on Poison drummer Rikki Rockett. The unexpected appointment of Rockett shocked many insiders who had no idea that the President was actually considering putting the Department of Justice in the hands of a below average glam rock drummer.
Rockett, whose only experience with the American legal system has been a few traffic tickets and a false rape allegation in 2008, was shocked when he received the phone call telling him he was expected to begin work as the nation’s top legal official.
“At first, I thought C.C. Deville was pranking me again. Like that time he called me and told me that the United States had banned the use of peroxide and I’d have to go back to my original color.”
“Then, I realized I was talking to this really serious sounding dude named Denis (White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough). He was like, ‘you gotta be here Monday. Get dressed.’ I was like, ‘I’m in the middle of rebuilding a 1976 Mustang…I don’t have time for this.’ But, he threatened to have me arrested, so I got on a plane and here I am.”
Obama’s second term has been marked by questionable decision-making, apathy and indifference. Several sources close to the President have complained about his sleeping until 1 o’clock in the afternoon after staying up all night playing Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. He has allegedly walked into three recent high level Cabinet meetings while wearing pajamas and eating Cocoa Puffs out of a coffee mug. Last month, he was caught playing Candy Crush on his iPhone during a meeting with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel.
According to a source close to the President, Rockett’s appointment was a function of Obama “looking to get the damned thing out of the way by picking the first random name that came to mind.”
During Holder’s tenure, The Justice Department’s highly successful “War On Holding White Collar Criminals Accountable” led to the criminal prosecutions of absolutely no one responsible for crimes that nearly led to the collapse of the American economy seven years ago. His legacy now intact, Holder plans on going back into the private sector and help defend many of the underprivileged Wall Street criminals who may accidentally be prosecuted in the coming years.
Rockett, who initially balked at taking the position, warmed to it once he realized he could now use the full force of the American criminal justice system to ruin the life of guitarist Richie Kotzen.
Back in 1993, Kotzen’s affair with Rockett’s wife-to-be caused him to be kicked out of Poison, but Rockett is now looking at using more draconian means to reprimand the philandering guitarist. He plans on using a lesser-known provision in the Patriot Act to have Kotzen declared an “enemy combatant” and shipped to a secret US military base in Albania where he will be water boarded four times a day while listening to Bulletboys albums for the rest of his natural life.
I Voted For Heavy Metal and All I Got Is This Lousy Country
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Politics Of Catastrophe on May 21, 2014
Americans vote for a variety of reasons. In some cases, they are concerned citizens who believe they can use the ballot box to change the direction our nation. In other cases, they do so because they feel an obligation to participate in the rituals of the democratic process. Not me. I vote every chance I get in order to amuse myself to no end by voting for my favorite metal artists.
It usually takes me a half an hour to vote. I go through the races I’ve followed closely and am able to intelligently evaluate, like Senatorial or Congressional elections, and try to pick the best person for the job. I know I’m being hustled here and am sure that nearly any candidate I pick is a shill for some multinational corporation, but I saw “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” one too many times and allow myself the illusion of “making a difference”. Once that nonsense is out of the way, I get to the fun stuff.
Often in elections, you are given the choice of candidates you have almost no hope of being able to evaluate. For example, how on earth can I possibly determine who would be the best Head of the State Department of Agriculture? I don’t know a thing about farming and wouldn’t have the foggiest notion of how to pick the most appropriate person for the job. I don’t even really know what they do. That’s when I start voting metal.
Georgia offers the write-in option in all races. Therefore, if you want to vote, like I did, for Venom’s gravel throated frontman Cronos to make the state’s agricultural policies, you can do just that! I felt bad about leaving the rest of the original Venom crew out so Abbadon and Mantas received my nod for seats on my local school board. For County Sheriff, I voted for Sodom’s Tom Angelripper. After all, shouldn’t the saw be the law?
I stand there typing in metal artists laughing maniacally. I have voted for Ronnie James Dio in every election going back to 1998 for positions ranging from Superintendent of Schools to Federal Judge. Confused people peer over at me and avert their eyes when I look back at them. They probably think I’m a madman. I’m merely a Surrealist-American doing his part to bring this nation one step closer to the golden age of weirdness that has come to be known as The Freak Future.
Usually, you have about 20 different judges to vote for. They often run unopposed, so unless they happened to give you a night in jail for going 15 miles per hour over the speed limit or get caught in a brothel covered from head-to-toe in ox blood, you are going to vote for them. I see this as a great opportunity to pack the courts with metal luminaries ranging from Quorthon to Lemmy. I voted “Slayer” for a seat on the Bench. The whole band. I struggled mightily with the question of whether this would mean the original Slayer lineup or some of the later incarnations. Who would be the Court drummer Bostaph, Lombardo or Jon Dette?
Sometimes I get bored and switch to other weird possible candidates. One year when the ballot was particularly long, I began voting for excellent defensive shortstops. Mark Belanger, Ozzie Smith, Omar Vizquel, Rey Ordonez…on and on.
Mostly I stick to voting metal because this is America and I have been told I can vote for what I believe in. I have been fed an endless supply of bromides and hackneyed platitudes about what size the government is supposed to be or when a baby is truly alive or how a marriage should be defined or what this nation should stand for. Politics is about who gets what and how much of it. At the end of the day, I’m really just voting on whether Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil and Boeing are going to receive larger tax breaks based on the size of their contributions.
The horrible truth is that climate change is causing environmental catastrophes everywhere. We are engaged in an endless stream of costly, bloody foreign wars. Politicians are empty vessels who have become nearly indistinguishable from mattress salesmen. America is circling the proverbial drain and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it. When someone asks me how I believe we should handle these problems, I look them square in the eyes and I tell them the only thing I can say that makes any sense to me anymore…
“Don’t blame me, I voted for Heavy Metal”
Metalhead Forced To Remove Artificial Leg With Megadeth Tattoo Before Boarding Flight
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Politics Of Catastrophe on April 1, 2014
The Limb Only Moments Before Takeoff (photo by Matthew Germain)
The greatest threat to Americans today is the looming spectre of terrorist attacks. After all, most people in other countries hate Americans for their freedom and easy access to bread and other such luxury items.
In the wake of 9/11, airport security increased dramatically in the hopes of preventing water bottles and other weapons of possible mass destruction from causing the interruption of commerce and annihilation of innocent human life. That’s why it should come as no surprise to anyone who believes in the values that America stands for that alleged metalhead Mohammad Nidal was detained for 15 hours and eventually forced to surrender his artificial leg at New York’s LaGuardia Airport before he was allowed to board a flight to Akron.
“We’ve seen this sort of thing before,” said TSA officer Ryan Goebbels. “A metalhead takes an artificial limb filled with C-4, brings it on an airplane and boom! Next thing you know airports all over the world close and the airlines and their investors are deprived of millions of dollars of revenue that rightfully belongs to them.”
While most metalheads are harmless neckbeards who spend their time protecting online metal forums from spam and off-thread references, there are a small number of “evildoers” who wish to do genuine harm to others. From not picking up a fallen child in the mosh pit while they are being trampled to death by wild hellions to potentially murdering thousands of innocent shoppers through the use of improvised explosive devices only days before Christmas, these so-called metalheads have been responsible for many of the worst crimes in American history.
The tattoo of Megadeth mascot Vic Rattlehead is also widely known to be a symbol used by metal gangs who have been known to kill innocent Americans for nothing more than whistling a Michael Bolton song in an elevator. Metal cults have popped up through the Southwest where kids as young as eight years old are drugged with meth and forced to worship images of Slayer vocalist Tom Araya, listen to Venom’s first three records backwards and read passages from the Koran. Ritual sacrifice and infant eating are common Saturday night events for these godless heathens. It is estimated that over 1 million people have joined these cults and gangs in the past six months.
Nidal, who was tied to a chair and questioned under bright lights by several FBI agents, revealed that he owned every Slayer album including “Hell Awaits”, which he had on vinyl. He also revealed plans to listen to all of Death Angel’s “Frolic Through The Park” during the flight. Death Angel’s music is so violent that it has inspired several horrific acts including the attempted assassination of then-President and current saint Ronald Reagan by former Raven drummer John Hinkley.
However, in spite of the danger this menace posed to society, Nidal was released after repeated beatings meant to help him overcome his addiction to this decadent and depraved lifestyle. Not only was he allowed to fly but he was provided generously with several in flight amenities like beverage service and a movie (things that he certainly would not have provided his victims with). He was also given back his artificial limb and metal-ridden iPod when he arrived in Akron. We are, after all, the freest country on earth.
The Federal Reserve Set to Expand Quantitative Djenting
Posted by Maximus Frank in The Politics Of Catastrophe on March 31, 2014
The Federal Reserve plans to scale up its Quantitative Djenting program in the second quarter of 2014, Chairwoman Janet Yellen announced at an appearance before the House Financial Services Committee Monday. “We still predict slack in the economy going into the Summer, so we will continue with the program to try and cut it off at the pass,” said Ms. Yellen.
“Quantitative Djenting”, or “QD,” is a subsidiary initiative of the Fed’s controversial Quantitative Easing program. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, the Fed has been injecting money into the financial bloodstream to purchase things like treasuries, securities, and mortgage-backed securities. Although meant to stimulate job growth and economic recovery, the program has come under intense scrutiny by critics who claim that the program could lead to inflation, while providing cheap money to Wall Street firms.
Included in the program, but buried in a subsection of dense legalese, was a plan for Quantitative Djenting. “QD” is a rather convoluted financial process whereby the central bank bankrolls recording contracts, studio fees, publicity, merchandising, and tour support for the structured investment vehicle known as “Djent.” As the output of these “bands” tends towards “0000” sub-prime Guitar Riff Derivatives, the Fed was able to achieve synergy with the program by lowering interest rates to near-zero.
“QD was really a response to a financially-strapped metal landscape, following the collapse of the Neo-Thrash and New-Nu-Metal bubbles,” claims Trafferson Foster, of the statistical research firm, Foster & Fosterson Global Markets. “The Fed pretty much caved to pressure from Major and independent labels alike to do something in the wake of the crash.”
Although former chairman Ben Bernanke claimed that QD was never intended to expand beyond its initial investments – which included Wall Street-owned companies like Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Tesseract, and Textures – the subsidiary program has expanded each year since its inception. This has led Wall Street analysts to speak affectionately of “QD-infinity,” which speculates that like a Djent Guitar Riff Derivative product, QD has become so enmeshed in the U.S. financial system that it could seemingly go on forever.
Several prominent economists have become particularly concerned with the evolution of the products that Djent companies are selling. Like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations, these firms have begun throwing together Guitar Riff Derivatives in baskets, and then selling that packaged basket.
“In practical economic terms, there really isn’t a difference between these Guitar Riff Derivatives and the Collateralized Debt Obligations that brought down the financial system in 2008,” argues Simon Carufsky, president of Fairer Markets, a non-partisan regulatory reform non-profit. “These companies are selling sub-prime 0000 guitar riffs within sub-prime 0000 guitar riffs, within sub-prime 0000 guitar riffs, and then calling that package a AAA-rated security.”
The apportioning of cash to Djent companies works kind of like a bartender pouring a pitcher of beer into five mugs lined up on a bar. The beer in the pitcher is the cash generated from royalty payments that companies like Emmure receive each month, while the mugs represent the different pools of Guitar Riff Derivatives. The bartender fills the highest-rated mug first, then the second highest, and so on down the line until either all five mugs are full or the pitcher runs out of beer. If there are enough defaults on royalty payments, the fifth, fourth, third, or even second mug might go dry – and if writers’ block happens in the studio, even the first mug might not get filled. If the mugs become too dependent on being filled by the pitcher, says Carufsky, then the progression of heavy metal could be brought to a sharp standstill.
“The whole thing is like a financial Inception. It’s absolute insanity, even before you factor in the Fed’s allotment of easy cash to companies like Animals as Leaders.”
Crowbar Headlines President Warren G. Harding’s 12th Inaugural Celebration
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Politics Of Catastrophe on December 16, 2013
President Warren G. Harding was easily elected to his twelfth term last month in a landslide election, garnering a record 98 percent of the vote, easily defeating the New Whig Party candidate and Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine.
Harding, leader of the Democratic-Republicans For God Party, continues to be the most significant politician in the history of the United States and is expected to be the leader of the nation until the world’s predicted destruction in 2173. Tonight, Crowbar will be the final act in what is expected the most widely witnessed television event since the execution of the ten leaders of the Kennedy Rebellion in 1969.
Harding’s political career is the stuff of legends. Even the youngest school child has heard the stories. After a relatively lackluster first term that featured corruption in the form of the Teapot Dome scandal and economic turmoil, Harding died of a heart attack on August 2nd, 1923. Had Harding not risen from the dead during his own funeral on August 4th, his presidency would have been a forgotten chapter in the history of the United States of the World.
Harding, who claimed God had allowed him to come back to life in order to lead the United States of The World to its current position as the most powerful nation on the planet, was reelected to a 4 -year term in 1924 after the still unsolved murder of Democratic Presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Harding’s mission to bring “normalcy” to the world began during this term. He invaded Canada, England and Mexico days after his election and by 1934 the United States controlled all of North America and most of Europe. Only its defeat in The Great Nuclear War with Argentina in 1962 stopped America’s march towards world domination.
Argentina’s nuclear strikes destroyed most of Harding’s empire and led to the revolutionary forces of John Fitzgerald Kennedy taking control of most of the Northern United States and renaming it Camelotia. Harding’s forces regrouped and retook the North in what was known as The Second American Civil War. Still, many questioned Harding’s leadership and he looked like he might lose the election of 1972 to Paul Newman. It was then that Harding performed The Five Miracles.
Harding, Who Will Only Allow Himself To Be Photographed In Black And White, Celebrating His 12th Term As President
These miracles included Harding making the nation of Albania disappear, turning water into Coca-Cola, using lasers from his eyes to melt The Washington Monument, reanimating Thomas Jefferson and the creation of flying cars. Harding eliminated Congress and the Supreme Court and declared martial law, which lasted until 2003. He rebuilt the military and, with help from the visitors from the Planet Klorg, was able to take control of the entire world except for Mongolia, the last stronghold of anti-American forces.
Harding occasionally still allows elections, but few experts believe that the opposition is given a fair chance to be victorious. All people who vote against him are immediately executed and used to feed the multi-headed battle giraffe drones and robot oxen that the USW have used to militarily control many of the Outer Territories.
With the outcome of the election never in doubt, many television and Conquernet experts have spent their time speculating who would headlining the inauguration. The prevailing wisdom was that Pentagram would be the band because of the close relationship between President Harding and vocalist and former Vice President Bobby Liebling. However, it is also known that Harding is a huge Crowbar fan, particularly the Odd Fellows Rest album. Last Friday, Crowbar vocalist Christina Aguilera and her husband, guitarist Kirk Windstein, received a call directly from Harding announcing the news.
Rumors have already started to swirl that if Crowbar has an excellent performance, Dave Lombardo, the band’s drummer and former Ambassador to Mars, might be asked to be Secretary of State. Lombardo has refused to comment directly, but his manservant Kerry King did indicate to several reporters that the famed drummer would take the job if it were offered. King, many remember, was enslaved by Lombardo after the failure of his 2005 neo-disco solo album “I Like To Boogie, Boogie” drove him into bankruptcy.
Exclusive: The Secret CIA Plot To Break Up Slayer
Posted by Keith Spillett in Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff, The Politics Of Catastrophe on March 6, 2013
The note under my door said “Meet at 3 AM in the parking garage behind the Waffle House.” I’d received notes like this before and, usually, they either led to great information or some guy in nothing but a trenchcoat asking me if I wanted to hold hands and whisper Carpenters lyrics into each other’s ears. Typically, these messages came from my high level contact in the CIA, a man who will only let me refer to him in public as Deep Thrombosis. He’s worked in The Company for many years and has put me onto some of the bigger stories Tyranny of Tradition has broken. He was the guy who tipped me off to Obama’s drumming on the first Overkill album and Nixon’s plot to assassinate the members of Black Sabbath.
I knew that a night meeting with Deep Thrombosis could be the thing that gets me that Pulitzer Prize I’ve been coveting all these years or even a date with The Great Kat. However, I was not prepared for the monumental significance of what he was about to tell me.
“Tonight, we are going to pull back the curtain,” whispered Deep Thrombosis while his shifty, beady eyes darted from side to side. “The information I’m about to give you could bring down the whole circus. If you print it, be warned, there is a good chance you will end up having a ‘boating accident’ or accidently hanging yourself while trying to install a garage door opener. And for godsakes, if you print this, you need to promise not to mention you got it from a source in the CIA! They’ll be able to track it back to me.”
“I will absolutely not mention how I got this information,” I told my CIA source. “I swear it!”
He proceeded to tell me the most outlandish story I had ever heard. A story of violence, intrigue and a CIA so out of control that it would go so far as to break up one of the great thrash metal groups of our time.
“The Company had heard some rumors that the next Slayer album was going to be all about drone strikes on Al-Queda bases. The thing was going to be called “South of Reason”. Typical longhaired hippie liberal propaganda. We’d have let Limbaugh handle them except they were going to reveal potential bombing coordinates, out some of our higher level agents, and really turn the metalhead public against the whole ‘secret murder of civilians who have had no trial’ thing. We couldn’t let it happen. So we took action.”
“The first part of the plan was to kidnap Kerry King and replace him with an actor who resembled Kerry King. We have a guy who has done some jobs with us in the past who was a dead ringer for King, a sort of grubby, misshapen fellow who slightly resembled a poorly shaven yeti. We scooped up the real Kerry and threw him into Guantanamo and told the guards he was actually Osama Bin Laden’s masseuse and to ‘not torture him’ until he gave us any information on the whereabouts of the secret terrorist training camps in Iceland.”
“The guy we are using as Kerry almost gave the thing away during the first show. He played three or four really great solos, which confused the audience. Luckily, one of our agents got ahold of him and told him to haphazardly move his whammy bar around really fast when it was his turn to solo and no one would know the difference. Things went fine after that.”
“We slipped a mind-altering substance into one of Araya’s drinks and, through the power of suggestion, convinced him to start listening to Asking Alexandria. We figured this would jam up any creativity that was flowing through his head. Then, we gave a copy of the band’s financial information to Lombardo. The rest is history.”
“It was our best work since we got rid of Mossedegh in Iran in ’53. Or Arbenz in Guatemala in ’54. Or Allende in Chile in ’73. Or….well, you get the point.”
“The thing is, I’ve begun to realize that this sort of thing is dangerous. After all, if the CIA can destroy Slayer or overthrow the government of a foreign country or randomly kill civilians who happened to be in the same vicinity as people we believe to be terrorists without the consent of the American people, then what is the point of even calling our country a democracy.”
“I started thinking of what a soulless, unaccountable beast like the CIA could do if it really put its mind to it. Forcing Exodus to do a ska album? Getting Testament to hire Michael Bolton as their lead singer? Letting Janick Gers write all the songs on the next Maiden record? The possibilities were too horrible to consider.”
“So, I have chosen you to help put a stop to this. Publish this article tomorrow and remind America that in a democracy, the government needs to be accountable to the people or else they have ceased being a democracy. That transparency is the only thing that can keep us from becoming a nation capable of any atrocity in the name of opening new markets and exploiting new sources of human capital. That America should stand for something greater than the principal of bending other, weaker nations to our will. And that Slayer should start writing stuff that sounds more like it did before Divine Intervention, because honestly, the new stuff hasn’t been all that impressive. Except for God Hates Us All. That was pretty cool.”
I heard the sound of a car door slam in the corner of the garage and turned to look at it. When I looked back, Deep Thrombosis was gone.
King Diamond Rocks Million Metalhead March, Announces Presidential Run
Posted by Keith Spillett in King Diamond For President in 2012, The Politics Of Catastrophe on August 13, 2011
Yesterday, over 1.8 million Metalheads marched on Washington D.C. demanding equal rights, less corruption in government and Hipster Reform. The rally, one of the largest in the nation’s history, culminated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with speeches by metal luminaries the likes of Steve Harris, Joey Demaio and Thomas Gabriel Warrior. However, the big moment took place at 4 PM when metal legend King Diamond repelled down the Washington Monument and strode onto the stage to give his keynote address.
Speculation has grown over the last few weeks about a possible King Diamond run for President in 2012. The crowd eagerly awaited his announcement. Metalheads traveled from as far away as New Zealand to see the speech. Jimmy “Buzzsaw” Samhain, a King Diamond fan since his older brother loaned him Abagail when he was 8, travelled by bus from Flagstaff, Arizona to see the speech. “He’s going to save us. I wouldn’t have travelled 3 days through a terrible blizzard to see him if I didn’t know for sure that HE IS THE ONE!!!!”
The Crowd HAILS The King as He Begins His Speech
The crowd didn’t have to wait long to find out The King’s plans. Early in the speech, he thrilled the crowd by making his intentions clear. “In 2012, the spirit of evil will overtake Washington and I will lead this nation back to greatness. I will be your next President!!!!!”
Many questions have arisen about the problems King Diamond’s campaign might face. Steven Witchkiller, of the organization Black Metal Fans For Truth, openly asked the question in an editorial written for the Washington Post on Wednesday whether someone born in Denmark could be President of the United States. Witchkiller is clearly unaware of the provision in the 17th Amendment to the Constitution that allows Danes and Swedes to run for President. It was passed during Woodrow Wilson’s administration to thank Denmark and Sweden for their unyielding support during World War I. Diamond would actually be the second Danish born President, following in the footsteps of Gerald Ford. However, many legal scholars have argued that since most Americans struggle to know the difference between Amendments and Commandments, the 17th might not actually apply.
Other members of the press have wondered what The King believes about many of the major issues facing Americans. Up until yesterday, many Americans didn’t even know what party he would run with. In a press release issued last night after the March, The King stated he would run as a Republican, in spite of his dislike of nearly every stance that Party has taken in the past 30 years. It is felt that his best chances lay in running Republican due to the general weakness, mindless incompetence and borderline insanity of most of the candidates currently in the field.
None of these issues seemed to matter as The King addressed 1.8 million screaming metal maniacs. After breathing fire for two consecutive minutes at the beginning of his speech, The King launched into a passage that will be taught in classrooms 200 years from now. In order to fully capture its spirit, we will reprint this section in its entirety.
“See…..I have dreams, too. Dreams of doctors putting giant spiders on their patients, dreams of grandmother’s evil gnarled hands reaching out from beyond the grave, dreams of ghastly horsemen chasing me through the night. I dream the dreams of pure mortal terror. I dream of a Washington over taken by headless ghouls and heartless corpses. I dream of an America so consumed by rage and horror that people cannot even leave their homes without fear of being attacked by hounds sent by the Dark Lord himself. I dream of a day where little metalhead boys and girls can wildly assault and maim hipster children without the fear of going to jail. I dream of a giant rock concert with all Americans, except hipsters, swaying back and forth, listening to “”Amon” Belongs To “Them””. We will let the bells of evil and malice ring from the hills of Georgia to the mountains of Colorado. We will let the bells of darkness and torment ring from sea to shining sea. And when these bells ring Americans will know it’s time to join hands and sing (falsetto) “Toooooonight The Circle Is Broken Forever!!!!!!!”
The March was not without its problems. Three metalheads were arrested by police for giving a “corpse paint makeover” to the statue of Lincoln behind the stage. Hipster protestors and metalheads clashed in front of the Capitol for five minutes when one of the protestors played a Band of Horses song from his radio. In spite of these isolated incidents, the day was a rousing success and may well be the beginning of a political campaign that will reshape the nation for generations to come.
Everything Is Dumb
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing, The Politics Of Catastrophe on August 11, 2011
“It is not a case of choosing those [faces] that, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those that average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.”
–John Maynard Keynes discussing Beauty Contests in the General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, 1936
Do you believe in big government? Then you must be a communist who looks to manipulate lazy poor people into voting for you by offering them the opportunity to spend the rest of their lives as indolent pikers. Dumb. Do you believe in small government? Then you must be an evil spirited misanthrope who doesn’t care one bit about anyone but yourself. Dumb. Are you pro-choice? Then you must be a maniacal baby killer who seeks to undermine basic human values. Dumb. Are you pro-life? Then you must be one of those religious psychopaths who want to force women back into the June Cleaver model of complete helplessness and social inferiority. Dumb. Do you like Obama? Then you are clearly in favor of the destruction of the American Way of Life. Dumb. Do you hate Obama? Then you are clearly a closeted racist unable to cope with the forces of progress. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
It’s all so insanely dumb. CNN had a question on their Facebook site last night asking all of their likers the question of what should be done about the economy. Everybody responded with some inane pet theory running the gamut from the flat tax to value added taxes to the repeal of all taxes to forcing the Chinese to send their entire work force to Africa to the Fair Tax to more sin taxes, etc. 2,658 comments in 15 hours. People inevitably started arguing and quoting dumb things they heard other people say. People called each other names. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everybody’s an expert. Each man a king, each woman a queen. Dumb.
I am not exempt from this sort of asinine posturing. I have moments where I forget that I am part of the mob. Wishful thinking does occasionally overtake my brain. The wicked, awful truth is by contributing to the blogosphere, I have merely exchanged my pitchfork and torch for a MacBook. I get worked up over the horrors of military spending or the Ponzi scheme-like quality of modern finance or the disgusting, venal nature of American politics from time to time and write about it. Dumb.
The truth of the whole thing is far worse than a person can contemplate without a complete psychic meltdown. It’s not just that we are dumb, that idea by itself is tolerable, even somewhat amusing. It’s that the product of all modern discourse seems to be dumb. Let’s assume for a moment that some of us want to use reason as an antidote to the basic dumbness of our world. Fine. Good luck. The non-dumb folks among us are welcome to use subtle, intelligent arguments to understand the world. It’s a free country, as they say.
Now, let’s say one of the non-dumb want to step outside of the perimeters of their mental world and, say, lessen the suffering of others or effect social change on any level. Well, those folks will present their ideas to a population that, for the most part, is uncomfortable and even threatened by anything that resembles reason. Let’s say you are making a reasoned argument for the truth of global warming. How on earth could you possibly explain the nuances of a concept like that to a person who believes that science is completely untrustworthy and dinosaurs weren’t real? Every time it snows they will thumb their nose at you and scream out “SEE!” Let’s say you are a bright and articulate religious person and you want to make a reasoned argument for what you believe? You will be met with every anti-religious cliché in the book and lumped together with sycophants from Jimmy Swaggart to Ayman Al-Zawahiri. You can’t win.
Eventually, the pure force of dumbness will overpower any even moderately intelligent argument. Seeing this, a person making reasonable arguments might well begin to lose trust in their audience. In order to enact any sort of change in our world, one must not just have a great idea, one must have an idea that the mob can be talked into. When the realities of the situation begin to occur to someone with an idea, they naturally begin to tailor their ideas to the wild eccentricities of the mob.
Most people might not understand the nuances of the idea of a welfare state, but they can certainly be convinced that its not right that someone who has a private jet pay the same taxes as they do. Now, the argument has moved out of the realm of thought and into the realm of pure, visceral dumbness. Pretty soon, an intelligent point about general inequity has become a shouting match between “the defenders of those with private jets” and “those who hate America.”
The upshot of all this weirdness is that extremely intelligent people are forced into becoming absurd polemicists. The merits of the idea take a backseat to the constant push and pull of public opinion. This idea is perfectly captured in the earlier quote by Keynes. The whole thing becomes a Faustian Beauty Contest fought not on the merits of what is beautiful, but rather, on the merits of what the mob might find the most beautiful.
Finding a point of view that makes sense becomes a lot like defensive driving. You are not driving based solely on the rules of the road, rather you drive based on what the idiot in the Camaro doing 100 miles per hour with a Pabst Blue Ribbon in his lap might think the rules of the road are. Even if you drive well, the moron next to you can still kill you. So, you adjust to the stupidity of the whole venture. In that adjustment, ideas that are logical are often jettisoned for more acceptable generalizations that can be absorbed by a mass of angry people. And those generalizations are met with counter generalizations, which are met with counter generalizations. The whole thing gets pushed out to the n-th degree. Suddenly, we are excitedly screaming at each other over what Joe The Plumber thinks. After a few hundred rounds of this everyone’s an idiot and no one can tell the difference. Over and over and back and forth. Dumb.
I offer no solution to this problem. This may well be how democracy works when you get it out of the textbooks; I’m not sure. I do wonder what the outcome of this insanity will be. I feel like I’m chained to 300 million lunatics going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Everyone is paddling in different directions. Everyone thinks that they know how to escape and are just as convinced that the morons next to them are messing things up. We argue over how we got in the barrel, we argue over how to best get out of the barrel, we argue over whether The Falls are even real, we argue over how big the barrel is, we argue over who should get out of the barrel first, we argue over whether we should work together or separately. The result of all this strain and turmoil is no different then if we did nothing at all. We move towards The Falls with no clear explanation of what is happening and no possibility of ever getting out of our predicament. Dumb.
King Diamond Solves Debt Crisis, Considers Presidential Run
Posted by Keith Spillett in King Diamond For President in 2012, The Politics Of Catastrophe on August 3, 2011
The King Speaking To Reporters After Yesterday’s Debt Agreement
As the President signed the agreement ending the American debt ceiling crisis into law it became clear that there is a new hero in Washington D.C. and his name is King Diamond. The King, using his incredible powers of persuasion and high-pitched falsetto voice, forced the Democrats and Republicans into negotiating an end to a battle that might well have crippled the American economy for years to come.
He became involved on Friday July 22nd when President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner broke off discussions. “If it weren’t for King Diamond, we probably would have gone into the worst economic crisis in our history,” said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid in an interview with CNN’s John King yesterday evening.
The King crafted an agreement that was amenable to both sides. Instead of raising taxes on the wealthy or cutting Medicare, King Diamond offered a 3 percent tax increase on all heavy metal albums bought in the United States. As most readers know, heavy metal album sales account for nearly 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product and record labels that sell heavy metal albums are the second largest employer in America today.
The King’s plan also calls for a 20 percent tax on all Exodus albums that don’t feature Steve Souza as vocalist. “That Rob Dukes fellow is extremely talented, but does anyone really believe Exodus is better without Souza. I say, tax them until they bring him back,” stated the King in a press release.
These two revenue streams should account for nearly four trillion dollars in new money coming in over the next ten years. In the President’s Address announcing the agreement, Obama made a point to single out King Diamond for his important contribution. “King Diamond’s willingness to be both firm and flexible was the key to the deal,” said Obama, “he’s a great vocalist and a warm and wonderful man.”
All this recent publicity has led some to wonder whether King Diamond might consider a bid for the Presidency in 2012. Diamond has refused to answer most questions about his willingness to run, but yesterday he told a reporter from the New York Times that he was seriously considering it. Webpages have sprouted up all over the Internet trying to convince the King to step in and save America from chaos and despair. The King has told his followers that he plans to make a formal announcement of his plans next week at the Million Metalhead March in Washington D.C.
Political commentators have mixed feelings about what the King’s candidacy could do to a race. While his appeal with the American public is undeniable, few people really know much about him besides the fact that he is an amazing singer and can command the forces of evil at a moment’s notice. Nobody even knows what political party he’s in (although he recently attended a thousand dollar a plate fundraiser for The Sugar-Coated Satan Sandwich Party).
Many pundits have pointed out that songs like “Night of The Unborn”, a song about zombie fetuses that attack a Planned Parenthood center, prove that he is Pro-Life and, therefore, would probably run as a Republican. A recent CNN/Gallup Poll claimed that if the King ran as a Republican he would defeat President Obama 46 to 43 percent. He polled particularly strongly in crucial battleground states like Ohio and Florida.
According to political columnist and talk radio host Jonathan Winthrop, “King Diamond’s entry into the 2012 Presidential race would change the whole thing. He could unite a coalition of crazed metalheads and, using the power of metal and his connection with the Prince of Darkness, I believe he could defeat Obama easily.”
Watching The Defective
Posted by Keith Spillett in Existential Rambings, Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff, The Politics Of Catastrophe on August 1, 2011
The following conversation took place recently in a mental hospital on the planet Klorg located in the Rumach Galaxy 20,000,000 west of Arcturus. The patient, Wsghk Z Weryhi, was locked in a padded cell and sedated for his own safety approximately one week ago. His family brought him in claiming that he disappeared for a day and reemerged exhibiting signs of severe dementia. We now join an interview between himself and the esteemed Doctor zZefgh W KorgabS already in progress.
(Editors note: The conversation was conducted in KlorgeanRW, a dialect common in the Southern Provinces of Klorg. The language and concepts have been adapted so that it can be understood by the primarily English speaking audience of The Tyranny of Tradition)
Dr. KorgabS: So, I want to go back to what you were saying earlier, about this America you claimed to have visited…
Weryhi: Doctor, I am sure that I was there. I snuck into the interstellar dock at the community center and set it for random coordinates. It took me to America.
Dr. KorgabS: Okay, so, let’s talk about this America. I want to make sure I understand what you are telling me. Please describe this whole, what did they call it, (consulting his notes)…ah yes, this “free market” idea that many of these Americans believe.
Weryhi: Sure….some of them believe that this system of economics that they have, they call it capitalism, is essentially perfect. They think that if they all do as they wish and accumulate as many resources as they can, everything will work out for the best for those that make what they like to call “good decisions”. Basically, some of them actually believe that selfishness is a good quality that is the best thing for the community.
Dr. KorgabS: (with a perplexed look on his face) Okay….now Wsghk, you can understand why I’d think this sounds a bit odd, right?
Weryhi: Believe me, I had the same response. One of them told me about this fellow named Adam Smith who said an “invisible hand” runs things and allows people acting only in their best interest to be protected. The invisible hand makes everything work out. Or, that’s what the fellow in the bowtie told me.
Dr. KorgabS: An…invisible hand???
Weryhi: Yes.
Dr. KorgabS looks down at his information tablets trying not to look concerned and moves on to the next subject
Dr. KorgabS: And….this democracy idea that most of them talk about.
Weryhi: Yes! It was a fascinating thing. From time to time they actually pick the people who make the most important decisions. It sounds like a great idea, but what they do with it is bizarre. Once they’ve picked these “politicians”, many of these people turn around and blame them for everything that goes wrong in their lives. Even though they were the ones who picked them in the first place! Then, if the politicians do what they want them to, they pick them again and start blaming them the minute these folks are elected. It’s amazing! They seem to take no responsibility for the choices they make!
Dr. KorgabS: Yes, you seem to talk a lot about how they blame each other.
Weryhi: One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. One very small section of the population controls most of the resources. Most of them struggle while a few of them have more than they need. Yet, many of the Americans blame those who have very little of the resources for making “bad decisions” and ruining things for the group. Every once in a while, a few of the people with a lot of resources blame other people with a lot of resources, but they don’t really try to change anything.
Dr. KorgabS: Do these Americans blame any one else?
Weryhi: They blame EVERYONE! That’s all they do. They blame people who don’t live in America. They blame people who come to America. They blame people who have new ideas. They blame people who don’t do what they want them to. They have entire television channels dedicated to blame.
Dr. KorgabS: Fascinating. Is anyone ever above blame?
Weryhi: Well, they like to make up stories about these people they call The Founding Fathers. Apparently, they understood everything and rarely had bad ideas. The funny part is they use these made up stories to justify all sorts of bizarre actions. These people seem to have almost limitless imaginations!
Dr. KorgabS: This is truly amazing.
Weryhi: Isn’t it. Some of them believe that this invisible all powerful being, that they have a bunch of different names for, controls everything and tells them what to do.
Dr. KorgabS: (incredulous) An invisible, all-powerful being that…tells them what to do? Sounds like that invisible hand thing.
Weryhi: Yes!!!! This invisible being idea is so strange. If things go well for them, they say he did it. When things are going badly, many of them don’t change anything about their lives, they just close their eyes and pretend to talk to this being. Apparently, they think this invisible being has some great plan that they are all a part of. If they disobey the voice in their head, they fear that after they die they will be set on fire for the rest of time.
Dr. KorgabS: Simply amazing. And many of them believe all of this?
Weryhi: Here’s the weirdest part….not only do they believe it, they are proud of it. Incredibly proud of all of these strange ideas. They wave flags and have parades to celebrate them. Without a trace of irony, these people act as if they have found the greatest set of ideas ever created. They are so impressed with these ideas they are willing to go to war and commit querby so that people will act more like them. (editors note: there is no English equivalent to the word querby. It means something like killing or harming based entirely on a delusion. It is the worst possible act in Klorgian society. No one there has committed querby in the past 20 years)
Dr. KorgabS: They commit QUERBY and are proud of it!!!! I simply cannot believe that.
Weryhi: If I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t either.
Dr. KorgabS: (standing up and leaving the room) You understand that this sounds pretty far fetched?
Weryhi: I know, I know. But I saw it with my own three eyes.
Dr. KorgabS: We will be in to check on you and talk more later. Until then, try not to think about that place.
Weryhi: I’ll try, Doctor. Thanks for listening.
20 minutes later in Doctor KorgabS office. KorgabS sits at a desk discussing the interview with his colleague and friend Doctor QwB
Dr. KorgabS: He seemed so convinced. The details are incredible. I have never worked with a patient with such detailed delusions.
Dr. QwB: It all sounds so crazy. I mean, the part about the interstellar space travel is quite possible, but this America he described sounds ridiculous. Does he know it can’t possibly be real?
Dr. KorgabS: No, I don’t think he does. It’s so sad. I’ve never met a sicker being in my entire life.
The Tyranny of Tradition 
